Signal Preregistered study examines how people evaluate AI-style financial advice

Summary

A study reports a preregistered vignette experiment involving 285 participants. As generative AI increasingly becomes a source people turn to for everyday financial decisions, the study examined how people evaluate AI generated financial advice. The experiment kept substantive content constant, including facts, numerical values, recommendation direction and core reasoning. Only the communication style was varied, presenting the advice as coming from an AI financial assistant, a certified financial planner acting as an expert, or a peer. Participants therefore received advice with identical substance but different presentation across the three conditions. This design allowed the researchers to isolate how presentation style alone shapes trust in and evaluation of financial advice.